Contents

Follow Through and Overlapping Action are closely related techniques which, when applied to animation, can help to render movement more realistically, and help to give the impression that characters follow the laws of physics. At the Disney Studio, Walt Disney was eager to push his animators to improve their work and develop their skills. He told them:

"Things don't come to a stop all at once guys; first there's one part and then another"[1]

The animators, keen to make their work feel more convincing, developed the concepts of "Follow Through" and "Overlapping Action", though the concepts were so closely related that they were not always easy to distinguish.[1] Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston identified five areas of motion where these principles would apply:
1. A character might have a coat or long ears, and these parts would keep moving once the figure had stopped moving. The ears, or coat, would "follow through" even after the main action had stopped.[1]
2. Bodies in motion do not move all at once, rather different parts of a body may move at different speeds. Therefore, as one part of the body stops, another part (such as an arm), might overlap or follow through the main action, slowly settling to a stop.[1]
3. Loose flesh, such as a dog's floppy jowls, might move at a slower speed than the more solid parts of the character. These parts might drag behind the main action.[2]
4. The completion of an action - how the action "follows through" - is often more important than the action itself.[2]
5. The "moving hold". A character might come to a complete halt, but the fleshy parts might follow through the main action in order to convey weight and believability.[2]